


Watches

by Celia_and



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Based on a Twitter microfic, Bicyclist Rey, F/M, First Meetings, Happy Ending, Just a sweet little morsel of a story, One Shot, Quiet watchmaker Ben, Unfounded fear of a bike accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and
Summary: She rides past his shop every morning around 8:42. He starts watching at 8:10, in case she’s early.Her bike is yellow. It suits her. One day he’s brave enough to stand in the doorway, but she doesn’t notice. He retreats.She’s the sun. But he looks anyway.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 179
Kudos: 919





	Watches

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Часы](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992021) by [Elafira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elafira/pseuds/Elafira)



> An expansion of a one-tweet [microfic](https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2/status/1239202604728619011). ⌚💛🚲
> 
> This exquisite moodboard is the work of [@curiousniffin](https://twitter.com/curiousniffin)!

His life is small and quiet. He hardly notices the passage of time, though his watches do their best to remind him.

He’s still young. He doesn’t feel it. He _shouldn’t_ be young; people don’t trust a young watchmaker. What does he know of time?

His shop is silent. It’s a third the width of the storefronts on either side: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it relic of a forgotten age. The watchmaker’s body is out of proportion to his shop. He draws in on himself, makes himself smaller so he displaces as little air as possible.

The blue paint on the door frame and around the window is peeling. He sands it down, buys new paint, and repaints it. A customer complains. “It gave the shop character.” The watchmaker shrugs and hunches back into his seat by the window.

People don’t buy handmade watches much anymore, and those who do contact him online. Customers come in for repairs, sometimes, or more often just a change of battery. He does what they need. They take their watches back from him and rejoin the world.

He supposes that most people do things to put a pushpin in their timelines. “I got married 12 years ago.” “We moved the next fall.” “Charlie was born in 2013.” “That was the summer we went to Hawaii.” For him, though, there’s just a homogeneous uninterrupted string of days that turn into weeks, and months, and years.

Until the woman on the yellow bike.

It’s March 8 when he first sees her. It’s raining a bit: not a real rain, but a dismal mist that doesn’t merit an umbrella. He happens to look up as she goes past. She rides quickly—a blur of brown hair, cardinal raincoat, and yellow bicycle. His heart leaps.

There’s no earthly reason why it should have affected him, but it does. He’s unsettled the rest of the day. He feels restless, and more out of place than usual. That afternoon he flips the open sign to closed and takes a walk for an hour. It’s still misting, but he doesn’t mind.

He watches for her the next day, eagerly hoping for some unknown reason that she’ll pass again. Just when he’s nearly persuaded himself that he’s being foolish, that he has no reason to think he’ll ever see her again, she rides by. A vision in white, today. His breath catches. She’s beautiful, but that doesn’t even occur to him for a few days. It’s not her beauty that captivates him: it’s her _life_. She’s achingly, unbearably vital. She’s light and heat.

She’s the sun. But he looks anyway.

After two weeks, he’s learned her schedule. She rides past the shop every morning around 8:42. Sometimes as early as 8:38, sometimes as late as 8:45.

He starts watching at 8:10, just in case.

It takes him a few weeks to realize that _he_ has a pushpin now. A Significant Event. His life now is divided into before March 8 and after March 8. He’s not entirely sure that he likes it. She’s unsettling, and inconvenient. She makes him want things.

When he fixes a watch, now, he imagines her watching his hands as he works. He imagines how he would describe what he was doing. He imagines shrinking further into the corner to make room in the shop’s air for her body. His skin prickles. He likes to imagine her watching him.

He starts propping the door open on nice mornings. One day he’s brave enough to stand near the doorway as she passes. Not all the way in the doorway—just inside, half in shadow. She doesn’t notice him. That’s okay. It would have been too much to ask for.

She doesn’t notice the next morning, either, when he stands a half-step closer. Or the day after that, when he leans a shoulder against the door frame. Sometimes she smiles as she passes, at something that’s not him. He watches her and wants things.

She rides by every morning, rain or shine, but one morning it’s raining so hard that he’s worried for her. When 8:45 comes and goes he tries to convince himself that she took the bus. He tries not to let himself think about a mangled yellow bike and a body face-down in a puddle. He tries to work, doing a repair that came in the day before, but his hands are unusually clumsy. He’s just about to throw down his tools in frustration when the bell over the door signals a customer. He looks up.

It’s her.

She’s not the sun, today, but she’s no less alive. And besides, she’s _here_.

She glowers at him, as if her bedraggled state is his fault. She has on her red raincoat. She must’ve pushed the hood down at some point because her face and hair are drenched.

“The chain broke,” she says curtly and without introduction, tossing her head toward the yellow bike resting forlornly on the sidewalk. “Do you have something that can fix it?”

“I...don’t know?” the watchmaker responds. “I don’t know bikes.”

She huffs impatiently. “Show me.”

He stands and pulls out his trays of tools, laying them on the counter for her perusal. She rummages through them without regard for order or organization.

“These won’t work,” she snaps, as if it’s his fault.

“Oh.” He doesn’t know what else to say. She’s still glowering at him, and a castle of dreams he didn’t even know he’d built starts crumbling around his ears.

“I’ll get a cab the rest of the way,” she finally sighs. “Can I leave my bike outside and come back for it?”

“You can leave it in here,” he says.

“In here?” Her eyes take in the minuscule shop: the cases of watches clustered around the scarce ten square feet of floor space. She looks at him and his overlarge frame. “I don’t think it’ll fit.”

“In that corner,” he says, gesturing. “I’ll stand it up and rest it against the wall.”

“It’s wet and dirty,” she says.

“I don’t mind,” he answers instantly.

She glances down at her phone, checking the time, and says, “Fine. Can you bring it in?”

“Of course.”

She lays one wet hand on his arm, swiftly kisses his cheek, and is out the door before he can think.

The spot where her lips touched him burns, despite the rainwater. He brings his hand up to touch it, dazed. He brings the bike in, wipes it down, and props it up carefully.

He has new things to imagine, now.

The rain has stopped by the time she comes back. He’d already resolved to keep the shop open late to wait for her, but she comes before his usual closing time. Her hair is still damp, but she doesn’t have her raincoat on, nor her glare. She bursts in and he’s reminded of how brilliantly blinding she is.

“I’m sorry,” she says without preliminaries. “I was frustrated and rude. Forgive me?”

“Yes,” the watchmaker answers immediately.

“Good.” She smiles. “You’ve been watching me, haven’t you?”

He freezes.

This feels like a test that he’s about to fail. “How did you know?”

“I know you.”

He’s baffled. “Have we met?”

“No,” she smiles. “Not like that. I just...know you. I’ve been watching you too.”

“No, you haven’t,” he blurts out. “You’ve never looked at me.”

“I’ve never looked at you in the _morning_. But you’ve never noticed me ride by in the afternoon.”

The afternoon! He feels a fool, never to have thought that if she rides one way she would have to ride back.

“You’re always intent on your work,” she continues. “I can see you through the window. The watchmaker with the door with the peeling blue paint.”

“I repainted it,” he confesses.

“I noticed. I’d like to lodge an official complaint.”

He smiles, with muscles unused to smiling. “You’ve come to the right place.”

She smiles back. “Good.”

“You really watched me?”

“Of course.”

 _Of course_. He doesn’t know what to think. He’s never been anyone’s of course.

Her expression turns uncertain. “You feel it, right? It’s not just me?”

He hopes he knows what she means, but he needs to be sure. “Feel what?”

“Like we’re connected. Like you know me but don’t remember from where.”

“Yes. Entirely.”

“Do you like it?” she asks steadily. “Watching me?”

He swallows thickly. “More than anything.”

“I think you should watch me from closer. Like on a date, maybe.”

The watchmaker’s castle of dreams is rebuilt, with some new turrets.

* * *

He has lots of pushpins, after that, in his timeline.

Like April 10: their first date. She wears a yellow dress and a smile, and he forgets to be alone. She pulls his face down and kisses him in a whirl of wind and cherry blossom petals.

Like April 23, when he forgets that it’s _much_ too soon and blurts out that he loves her. She’s so surprised that she lets out a whoop of laughter, and he’s petrified. But then she kisses his cheeks and his eyes and she says it back, again and again and again.

Like June 12, when their couch kisses turn into something more and she straddles his lap and pulls her underwear to one side and sinks down onto him for the first time, and when she looks straight into his eyes he feels so much he could burst out of his skin.

Like September 5, his birthday, when he comes out to the living room to find a him-sized blue bike and her. In that moment he’s a boy again, and she’s Christmas morning.

Like April 10 of the following year: the anniversary of their first date. She gives him a box of pushpins wrapped in a bow and asks him to marry her. He pulls a ring out of his pocket and says yes.

And so the watchmaker makes friends with time.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this little present that my brain gave me. 💛
> 
> I’m on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2) if you’d like to come visit.


End file.
